{"id":1155,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:57","slug":"17-the-suprarational-good-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/17-the-suprarational-good-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-17_The Suprarational Good.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n
\n


\nCHAPTER <\/font><\/b>
\nXV<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Suprarational Good<\/font><\/span><\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n               
\n           
\nW<\/span><\/font>E
\nBEGIN<\/font><\/span> <\/span>to
\nsee, through the principle and law of our religious being, through the principle
\nand law of our aesthetic being, the universality of a principle and law which
\nis that of all being arid which we must therefore hold steadily in view in
\nregard to all human activities. It rests on a truth on which the sages have
\nalways agreed, though by the intellectual thinker it may be constantly
\ndisputed. It is the truth that all active being is a seeking for God, a seeking
\nfor some highest self and deepest Reality secret within, behind and above
\nourselves and things, a seeking for the hidden Divinity; the truth which we
\nglimpse through religion, lies concealed behind all life; it is the great
\nsecret of life, that which it is in labour to discover and to make real to its
\nself-knowledge.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The seeking for God is also, subjectively, the seeking for
\nour highest, truest, fullest, largest self. It is the seeking for a Reality
\nwhich the appearances of life conceal because they only partially express it or
\nbecause they express it from behind veils and figures, by oppositions and
\ncontraries, often by what seem to be perversions and opposites of the Real. It
\nis the seeking for something whose completeness comes only by a concrete and
\nall-occupying sense of the Infinite and Absolute; it can be established in its
\nintegrality only by finding a value of the infinite in all finite things and by
\nthe attempt<\/font> –<\/font> necessary, inevitable, however
\nimpossible or paradoxical it may seem to the normal reason<\/font> –<\/font> to raise all relativities to their absolutes and to
\nreconcile their differences, oppositions and contraries by elevation and
\nsublimation to some highest term in which all these are unified. Some perfect
\nhighest term there is by which all our imperfect lower terms can be justified
\nand their discords harmonised if once we can induce them to be its conscious
\nexpressions, to exist not for themselves but for That, as contributory values
\nof that<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-136<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nhighest Truth, fractional measures of that highest and largest common
\nmeasure. A One there is in which all the entangled discords of this
\nmultiplicity of separated, conflicting, intertwining, colliding ideas, forces,
\ntendencies, instincts, impulses, aspects, appearances which we call life, can
\nfind the unity of their diversity, the harmony of their divergences, the
\njustification of their claims, the correction of their perversions and
\naberrations, the solution of their problems and disputes. Knowledge seeks for
\nthat in order that Life may know its own true meaning and transform itself into
\nthe highest and most harmonious possible expression of a divine Reality. All seeks
\nfor that, each power feels out for it in its own way: the infrarational gropes
\nfor it blindly along the line of its instincts, needs, impulses; the rational lays
\nfor it its trap of logic and order, follows out and gathers together its
\ndiversities, analyses them in order to synthetise; the supra- rational gets
\nbehind and above things and into their inmost parts, there to touch and lay
\nhands on the Reality itself in its core and essence and enlighten all its
\ninfinite details from that secret\u00a0
\n<\/span>centre. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span>This truth comes most easily home to us in Religion and in Art,
\nin the cult of the spiritual and in the cult of the beautiful, because there we
\nget<\/font> <\/span>
\naway <\/font> <\/span>
\nmost thoroughly from the unrestful<\/font><\/span> pressure of the
\noutward appearances of life, the urgent siege of its necessities, the deafening
\nclamour of its utilities. There we are not compelled at every turn to make
\nterms with some gross material claim, some vulgar but inevitable necessity of
\nthe hour and the moment. We have leisure and breathing-time to seek the Real
\nbehind the apparent: we are allowed to turn our eyes either away from the
\ntemporary and transient or through the temporal itself to the eternal; we can
\ndraw back from the limitations of the immediately practical and re-create our
\nsouls by the touch of the ideal and the universal. We begin to shake off our
\nchains, we get rid of life in its aspect of a prison-house with Necessity for
\nour jailer and utility for our constant taskmaster; we are admitted to the
\nliberties of the soul; we enter God’s infinite kingdom of beauty and delight or
\nwe lay hands on the keys of our absolute self-finding and open ourselves to the
\npossession or the adoration of the Eternal. There lies the immense value of
\nReligion, the immense value of Art and Poetry to the human spirit; it lies in<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-137<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ntheir immediate power for inner truth, for
\nself-enlargement, for liberation<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But in other spheres of life, in the
\nspheres of what by an irony of our ignorance we call especially practical life,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n– although, if <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe Divine be our true object
\nof search and realisation, our normal conduct in them and our current idea of
\nthem is the very opposite of practical, – we are less ready to recognise the
\nuniversal truth. We take a long time to admit it even partially in theory, we
\nare seldom ready at all to follow it in practice. And we find this difficulty
\nbecause there especially, in all our practical life, we are content to be the
\nslaves of an outward Necessity and think our- selves always excused when we
\nadmit as the law of our thought, will and action the yoke of immediate and
\ntemporary utilities. Yet even there we must arrive eventually at the highest
\ntruth. We shall find out in the end that our daily life and our social
\nexistence are not things apart, are not another field of existence with another
\nlaw than the inner and ideal. On the contrary, we shall never find out their
\ntrue meaning or resolve their harsh and often agonising problems until we learn
\nto see in them a means towards the discovery and the individual and collective
\nexpression of our highest and, because our highest, therefore our truest and
\nfullest self, our largest most imperative principle and power of existence. All
\nlife is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise,
\nexpress the Divine<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt is in our
\nethical being that this truest truth of practical life, its real and highest
\npracticality becomes most readily apparent. It is true that the rational man
\nhas tried to reduce the ethical life like all the rest to a matter of reason,
\nto determine its nature, its law, its practical action by some principle of
\nreason, by some law of reason. He has never really succeeded and he never can
\nreally succeed; his appearances of success are mere pretences of the intellect
\nbuilding elegant and empty constructions with words and ideas, mere conventions
\nof logic and vamped-up syntheses, in sum, pretentious failures which break down
\nat the first strenuous touch of reality. Such was that extraordinary system of
\nutilitarian ethics discovered in the nineteenth century<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe great century of science and reason and utility –
\nby one of its most positive and systematic minds and now deservedly discre-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-138<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ndited. Happily we
\nneed now only smile at its shallow pretentious errors, its substitution of a
\npractical, outward and occasional test for the inner, subjective and absolute
\nmotive of ethics, its reduction of ethical action to an impossibly scientific
\nand quite impracticable jugglery of moral mathematics, attractive enough to the
\nreasoning and logical mind, quite false and alien to the whole instinct and
\nintuition of the ethical being. Equally false and impracticable are other
\nattempts of the reason to account for and regulate its principle and phenomena,
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> the hedonistic theory which
\nrefers all virtue to the pleasure and satisfaction of the mind in good or the
\nsociological which supposes ethics to be no more than a system of formulas, of
\nconduct generated from the social sense and a ruled direction of the social
\nimpulses and would regulate its action by that insufficient standard. The
\nethialcal\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>being escapes from all these
\nformulas; it is a law to itself and .finds its principle in its own eternal
\nnature which is not in its ‘essential character a growth of evolving mind, even
\nthough It <\/font> <\/span>
\nmay<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>seem to be that in its
\nearthly history, but a light from the <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nideal, a reflection
\nin man of the Divine<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nNot that all these
\nerrors have not each of them a truth behind their false constructions; for all
\nerrors of the human reason are false representations, a wrong building,
\neffective misconstructions of the truth or of a side or a part of the truth.
\nUtility is a fundamental principle of existence and all fundamental principles
\nof<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nexistence are in the end one; therefore it is true that the highest good is
\nalso the highest utility. It is true also that, not any balance of the greatest
\ngood of the greatest number, but simply the <\/font> <\/span>
\ngood of others and most widely
\nthe good of all is the one ideal <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\naim of our outgoing ethical
\npractice; it is that which the ethical man would like to effect, if he could
\nonly find the way and be always sure what is the real good of all. But this
\ndoes not help\u00a0 <\/span>to regulate our ethical
\npractice, nor does it supply us’ with its inner principle whether of being or
\nof action, but only produces one of the many considerations by which we can
\nfeel our way along <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe road which is so difficult to travel. Good, not utility,<\/font><\/span> must be the principle and standard of good; otherwise we fall into the
\nhands of that dangerous pretender expediency, whose whole method is alien to
\nthe ethical. Moreover, the "<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-139<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nstandard of utility, the judgment of utility,
\nits spirit, its form, its application must vary with the individual nature, the
\nhabit of mind, the outlook on the world. Here there can be no reliable general
\nlaw to which all can subscribe, no set of large governing principles such as it
\nis sought to supply to our conduct by a true ethics. Nor can ethics at all or
\never be a matter of calculation. There is only one safe rule for the ethical
\nman, to stick to his principle of good, his instinct for good, his vision of
\ngood, his intuition of good and to govern by that his conduct. He may err, but
\nhe will be on his right road in spite of all stumblings, because he will be
\nfaithful to the law of his nature. The saying of the Gita is always true:
\nbetter is the law of one’s own nature though ill performed, dangerous is an
\nalien law however speciously superior it may seem to our reason. But the law of
\nnature of the ethical being is the pursuit of good; it can never be the pursuit
\nof utility.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Neither is its law the pursuit of
\npleasure high or base, nor self-satisfaction of any kind, however subtle or
\neven spiritual. It is true, here too, that the highest good is both in its
\nnature and inner effect the highest bliss. Ananda, delight of being, is the
\nspring of all existence and that to which it tends and for which it seeks
\nopenly or covertly in all its activities. It is true too that in virtue
\ngrowing, in good accomplished there is a great pleasure and" that the seeking
\nfor it may well be always there as a subconscient motive to the pursuit of
\nvirtue. But for practical purposes this is a side aspect of the matter; it does
\nnot constitute pleasure into a test or standard of virtue. On the contrary,
\nvirtue comes to the natural man by a struggle with his pleasure-seeking nature
\nand is often a deliberate embracing of pain, an edification of strength by
\nsuffering. We do not embrace that pain and struggle for the pleasure of the
\npain and the pleasure of the struggle; for that higher strenuous delight,
\nthough it is felt by the secret spirit in us, is not usually or not at first
\nconscious in the conscient normal part of our being which is the field of the
\nstruggle. The action of the ethical man is not motived by even an inner plea- sure,
\nbut by a call of his being, the necessity of an ideal, the figure of an
\nabsolute standard, a law of the Divine.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span>In the outward history of
\nour ascent this does not at first<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-140<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nappear<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nclearly,
\ndoes not appear perhaps at all; there the evolu<\/font><\/span>tion
\nof man in society may seem to be the determining cause of his ethical
\nevolution. For ethics only begins by the demand upon him of something other
\nthan his personal preference, vital pleasure or material self-interest; and
\nthis demand seems at first to work on him through the necessity of his
\nrelations with others, -by the exigencies of his social existence. But that
\nthis is not the core of the matter is shown by the fact that the ethical demand
\ndoes not always square with the social demand, nor the ethical standard always
\ncoincide with the social standard. On the contrary, the ethical man is often
\ncalled upon to reject and do battle with the social demand, to break, to move
\naway from, to reverse the social standard. His relations with others and his
\nrelations with himself are both of them the occasions of his ethical growth;
\nbut that which determines his ethical being is his relations with God, the urge
\nof the Divine upon him whether concealed in his nature or conscious in his
\nhigher self or inner genius. He obeys an inner ideal, not an outer standard; he
\nanswers to a divine law in his being, not to a social claim or a collective
\nnecessity. The ethical imperative comes not from around, but from within him
\nand above him.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nIt has been felt and
\nsaid from of old that the laws of right, the laws of perfect conduct are the
\nlaws of the gods, eternal beyond, laws that man is conscious of and summoned
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nto<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nobey. The age of reason has scouted this summary
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\naccount of the matter as a superstition or a poetical imagination which
\nthe nature and history of the world contradict. But still there is a truth in
\nthis ancient superstition or imagination which the rational denial of it misses
\nand the rational confirmations of it, whether Kant’s categorical imperative or
\nanother, do not altogether restore. If man’s conscience is a creation of his
\nevolving nature, if his conceptions of ethical law are mutable and depend on
\nhis stage of evolution, yet at the root of them there is something constant in
\nall their mutations which lies at the very roots of his own nature and of
\nworld-nature. And if Nature in man and the world is in its beginnings
\ninfra-ethical as well as infrarational, as it is at its summit supra-ethical as
\nwell as suprarational, yet in that infra-ethical there is some-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-141<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthing which becomes in the human plane of being
\nthe ethical, and that supra-ethical is itself a consummation of the ethical and
\ncannot be reached by any who have not trod the long ethical road. Below hides that
\nsecret of good in all things which the human being approaches and tries to
\ndeliver partially through ethical instinct and ethical idea; above is hidden
\nthe eternal Good which exceeds our partial and fragmentary ethical conceptions.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nOur ethical impulses and
\nactivities begin like all the rest in the infrarational and take their rise
\nfrom the subconscient. They arise as an instinct of right, an instinct of
\nobedience to an ununderstood law, an instinct of self-giving in labour, an
\ninstinct of sacrifice and self-sacrifice, an instinct of love, of
\nself-subordination and of solidarity with others. Man obeys the law at first
\nwithout any inquiry into the why and the wherefore; he does not seek for it a
\nsanction in the reason. His first thought is that it is a law created by higher
\npowers than himself and his race and he says with the ancient poet that he
\nknows not whence these laws sprang, but only that they are and endure and
\ncannot with impunity be violated. What the instincts and impulses seek after,
\nthe reason labours to make us understand, so that the will may come to use the
\nethical impulses intelligently and turn the instincts into ethical ideas. It
\ncorrects man’s crude and often erring misprisions of the ethical instinct,
\nseparates and purifies his confused associations, shows as best it can the
\nrelations of his often clashing moral ideals, tries to arbitrate and compromise
\nbetween their conflicting claims, arranges a system and many-sided rule of
\nethical action. And all this is well, a necessary stage of our advance; but in
\nthe end these ethical ideas and this intelligent ethical will which it has
\ntried to train to its control, escape from its hold and soar up beyond its
\nprovince. Always, even when enduring its rein and curb, they have that inborn
\ntendency.
\nFor the ethical being like the rest is a growth and a seeking towards the
\nabsolute, the divine, which can only be attained securely in the supra
\nrational. It seeks after an absolute purity, an absolute right, an absolute
\ntruth, an absolute strength, an absolute love and self-giving, and it is most
\nsatisfied when it can<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-142<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nget them in absolute measure, without limit,
\ncurb or compromise, divinely, infinitely, in a sort of godhead and
\ntransfiguration<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nof the ethical being. The reason
\nis chiefly concerned with what <\/font> <\/span>
\nit best understands, the apparent process, the
\nmachinery, the outward act, its result and effect, its circumstance, occasion
\nand motive; by these it judges the morality of the action and the morality of
\nthe doer. But the developed ethical being knows instinctively that it is an
\ninner something which it seeks and the outward act is only a means of bringing
\nout and manifesting within ourselves by its psychological effects that inner
\nabsoluteld eternal entity. The value of our actions lies not so much in their
\napparent nature and outward result as in their help towards the growth of the
\nDivine within us. It is difficult, even\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span>impossible to justify upon outward grounds the absolute justice,
\nabsolute right, absolute purity, love or selflessness of an action or course of
\naction; for action is always relative, it is mixed and uncertain in its
\nresults, perplexed in its occasions. But it is\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>possible to relate the inner being to the eternal and absolute
\ngood, <\/font> <\/span>
\nmake <\/font> <\/span>
\nour sense and will full of it so as to act out of its
\nimpulsio<\/font><\/span>n<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nor
\nits intuitions and inspirations. That is what the ethical <\/font> <\/span>
\nbeing labours
\ntowards and the higher ethical man increasingly attains to in his inner efforts<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nIn fact ethics is not in
\nits essence a calculation of good and evil in the action or a laboured effort
\nto be blameless according the standards of the world,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthose are only crude appearances, it is an attempt to
\ngrow into the divine nature. Its parts of purity are an aspiration towards the
\ninalienable purity of God’s being; its parts of truth and right are a seeking
\nafter conscious unity with the law of the divine knowledge and will; its parts
\nof sympathy and charity are a movement towards the infinity and universality of
\nthe divine love; its parts of strength and manhood are an edification of the
\ndivine strength and<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\npower. That is the heart of its meaning. Its high
\nfulfilment comes <\/font> <\/span>
\nwhen the being of the man undergoes this
\ntransfiguration; then it is not his actions that standardise his nature but his
\nnature that gives value to his actions; then he is no longer laboriously
\nvirtuous, artificially moral, but naturally divine. Actively, too, he is
\nfulfilled and consummated when he is not led or<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-143<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nmoved either by the infrarational impulses or
\nthe rational intelligence and will, but inspired and piloted by the divine
\nknowledge and will made conscious in his nature. And that can only be done,
\nfirst by communication of the truth .of these things through the intuitive mind
\nas it purifies itself progressively from the invasion of egoism, self-interest,
\ndesire, passion and all kinds of self- will, finally through the suprarational
\nlight and power, no longer communicated but present and in possession of his
\nbeing. Such was the supreme aim of the ancient sages who had the wisdom which
\nrational man and rational society have rejected because it was too high a truth
\nfor the comprehension of the reason and for the powers of the normal limited
\nhuman will too bold and immense, too infinite an effort<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Therefore it is with the cult of Good, as
\nwith the cult of Beauty and the cult of the spiritual. Even in its first
\ninstincts it is already an obscure seeking after the divine and absolute; it
\naims at an absolute satisfaction, it finds its highest light and means in
\nsomething beyond the reason, it is fulfilled only when it finds God, when it
\ncreates in man some image of the divine Reality. Rising from the infrarational
\nbeginnings through its intermediate dependence on the reason to a suprarational
\nconsummation, the ethical is like the aesthetic and the religious being of man
\na seeking after the Eternal.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-144<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XV The Suprarational Good\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0                               WE BEGIN to see, through the principle and law of our religious being, through the principle and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","wpcat-25-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}